I lent back in my chair, a guffaw of laughs escaping me. I was thinking about the game, even when outside of it now I was thinking about how since finding the bug I had done several things, the first was build myself something to protect my secret weapon, I had built a castle, out of the sand using a form of earth magic to solidify the walls. A castle at the bottom of which houses nothing more than an oubliette. An unaltered patch of desert accessible only by flying. A prison that houses a single, dying woman. Unethical, yes, did I care? Fuck no.

I lent back forward and hunched over my monitor again, I was scanning through the game's forums, an activity that I had derived great enjoyment out of for several reasons, first was the fact that my inner lore junky was going wild on all the bits of story people had found from several different regions. The other came from a very specific thread I had found.

"He is a fucking hacker I'm telling you!" Typed an obviously angry man with the handle of player567, the thread was called 'Partholon, Hacker or Pro?' Partholon was my username for those wondering, derived from an Irish hero. However, this thread was absolutely gold. On one hand, it appealed to a deep-seated urge of mine to be praised and on the other, it gave some pretty solid information. Such as the fact that I figured out why the bug worked, apparently, some guy called the helpline about me after checking the world leaderboards and had found that my little goldmine was actually the opening character that led to a chain of quests. Culminating in the spawning of a legendary dungeon, the highest kind. it also seemed that she was dying from a spell also triggered by my words, a broken spawn event that finished the dungeon and all the subsequent quests for me.

I crawled onto my bed and pulled away the blankets, throwing them onto the floor, it was summer here and fucking hot. I shoved the dive equipment onto my head and logged on.

I dug my toes into the sand, a feeling I relished. It reminded me of my days living on the coast. I had created an avatar since being here last and he was basically just a scaled up of my scruffy looking self, except where I was lacking he excelled. He had a light beard with long dark hair that cascaded over his shoulders, and eyes the colour of the night sky. He was dressed in a simple pair of cloth clothes and walked barefoot. Apart from that, I looked very human. I flew to the top of my castle, pant legs fluttering in the breeze as I did so. My hud, however, had undergone a far more apparent and drastic change.

It had gone from the minimalistic, spartan arrangement of few numbers to the entire top of my screen being filled by various changing statistics, where before both the bottom corners were empty they were now housing two separate minimaps. One showed my location in the world, the other was the same map but with an overlay, it was scanning for the position of lay lines and other sources of primal mana.

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I had min-maxed my character, investing very heavily in magic, physically my avatar was very similar to a human in its capabilities, the magic was far greater though. I had even passed the point where I was able to create my own form of craft. For that, I chose the manipulation of pure, primal mana. Thus the need for the map showing me its location.

I walked the hallways of my Ziggurat shaped castle, my fingers dancing lightly over the walls as I passed them. I was heading to a specific room. I entered through a doorway and a pleasured sigh escaped my lips. It never ceased to take my breath away.

The room had an insanely high ceiling that I looked at with wonder as I walked toward the centre, as I did so I went down the stairs onto the lowered section of it. My feet sank into the soft floor of this bowl-like formation in the centre of the room, it was filled with pillows and rugs, both created by my mana. In the centre was a massive throne. It was simple and stately it didn't need to be flashy as it had nothing to prove. It was bulky and geometric and screamed both restrained excess and awesome power, it reminded me of me. I liked my throne.

However, my castle was missing a very specific thing. Worshipers. Luckily for me, I had scouted out several villages to source them from. I wanted a haram for my throne room, I wanted soldiers for my walls, I wanted servants to feed me. I wanted it all, a hedonistic paradise where I was a king. No, where I was a god.

I walked down the halls and through false doors and secret halls. I knew where I was going and entered the pit silently, flying down to the unaltered desert floor through the flickering torchlight that cast a sinister glow on the affair that followed. On the floor lay the woman, unmoved and unmistakable.

She looked up at me with saucer dish eyes, wide in fear and panic. I knelt next to her and stroked her hair. She recoiled from my touch but I held her firm. Tears began to well up in her eyes as I leaned in closer.

"I just need a top up," I said softly. Her eyes closed and the tears fell freely from their prisons. She looked up to me and with chapped lips parsed out the words.

"Please don't." She whispered. I kissed her forehead, uttered the words and flew away.